RDR's woes deepen, as Rowling joined by more wronged celebs

Lawyers for the millionaire children’s author JK Rowling have confirmed that fellow novelist, Agatha Christie and the legendary Mongol warlord, Ghengis Khan have joined Rowling to bring a class action suit against RDR books, the American publisher behind “The Harry Potter Lexicon”.

“While investigating the extent of RDR’s infringement, we were shocked to discover that Ms Rowling is far from the only victim here,” read the statement. “The Getaway guide to Agatha Christie’s England and Dateline Mongolia are undisguised and clumsy attempts to capitalise on valuable brand recognition of legitimate rights holders.

“Through repeated references to my client’s swift and bloody conquest of 13th Century Asia, Dateline Mongolia is clearly hoping to imply some sort of association or endorsement. Its florid description of Mr Khan’s crushing of the of the Kara-Khitan Khanate – which, after all happened hundreds of years ago – adds absolutely nothing new and is, basically, theft.”

Khan’s participation in the suit appears to be part of a wider strategy to crack down on unauthorised use of his intellectual property. Just last month, the warlord’s lawyers successfully enforced a fiercely disputed patent, covering the practice of “drinking the blood of an enemy, devouring his cattle and / or, using his women.”

Meanwhile, press speculation that Christie would either join with Rowling, or bring her own action against RDR reached a climax during an interview published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, in which she described Christie’s England as a “fucking travesty” and its author as a “shit-wagon”.

SHOWBIZ NEWS: "Mars" star Glennister confirmed for new spin-off

Actor Phillip Glennister has confirmed he will return to the role of DCI Gene Hunt, the hard-bitten copper with a heart of gold, for a third incarnation of the BBC’s popular Life on Mars franchise. Due to be filmed later this year, for broadcast in Spring 2009, the new series will see Glennister paired with Barbara Windsor, playing a forensic pathologist who, a week before retirement, suffers a near-fatal accident with a pipette and is catapulted into the year 2038.

The BBC has been keen to keep the plot of the series secret, though sources close to the production team have suggested that about 90% of the locations used for filming would be “non period-specific former industrial land” with a soundtrack of “mostly German techno”.

Keeley Hawes, star of the show’s previous outing, Ashes to ashes, is said to make a brief appearance in the first episode, in which she saves Manchester by piloting an out-of-control spaceship into the sun.

OPINIO-TRON SAYS: Virgin Media not so innocent, demands coin for booty

After last week's idle speculation about the future of net neutrality in the UK, it's nice to see Virgin Media's incoming chief exec, Neil Berkett, advancing the debate with this little PR gem, in which he describes the concept of a level and fair internet as "a load of bollocks". The story originally comes from the Royal Television Society’s magazine, which I haven't seen, but if the quotes are accurate, this is pretty bad news.

Among the other choice morsels highlighted from the piece is a threat to bump any content producers who don't pay up into "bus lanes". Predictably iPlayer seems to be the main target of his ire.

So this will surely be the start of an almighty dust-up. Right?

Not necessarily. Assuming Mr Berkett can keep a lid on his corporate Tourette’s, this is going to be an easy sell for the ISPs...

Virgin Media and the BBC have announced a partnership project, to deliver a next generation media internet to UK homes by 2010. Using intelligent technology, to give greater internet bandwidth to popular multi-media services, the companies claim users will enjoy higher definition, more reliable content on demand.

Neil Berkett, Virgin Media's chief executive, said: "Exciting new web services, such as the BBC's groundbreaking iPlayer, currently have to compete for limited bandwidth with other, less speed-sensitive web traffic. By intelligently identifying and prioritising different kinds of traffic, web users will enjoy a more efficient, transparent service."

It really could be that simple. After all, we've shown time and time again that we'll always chose short term low cost and convenience over some woolly principle. Particularly when the principle in question has an icky name like "net neutrality".

Of course, the practical consequences of such a surrender would hit home pretty quickly. Superior but un-established new services, confined to Berkett's "bus lane", would be at an artificial competitive disadvantage. So, we'd simply stop getting those market-disrupting new players which have injected real innovation and competition into so many stale markets over the past decade. At the very least, new internet ventures would need to generate revenue almost from Day 1, which would be a pretty fundamental change (I believe for the worse).

As we're also seeing with Phorm, the ISPs are desperate to dig themselves out of the "higher speeds at lower prices" hole they've made for themselves, by using access to their own customer base as commercial leverage.

Let's hope we care enough about this to vote with our feet.

Update:24 hours later, The Register is carrying a story, quoting a Virgin Media flack as saying the company doesn't intend to penalise non-paying sites. However, "we recognise that as more customers turn to the web for content, different providers will have different needs and priorities and, in the long term, it's legitimate to question how this demand will be managed."

Just so we're clear then - giving the big boys a faster pipe is not the same as bumping the plebs into the "bus lane".

Phoof. Didn't see that coming.

BREAKING NEWS: Bank of England lowers interest rates to 5%

In a move which sent shockwaves through absolutely nowhere, the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee lowered UK interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point today. The announcement was met by immediate ambivalence in the money markets, with many of the UK's high street banks doing absolutely nothing.

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, defended the committee's largely symbolic monthly meetings as "a lovely old tradition" which "harks back to days gone by, when interest rates had the slightest impact on the cost of borrowing."

This latest rates drop is part of a scheduled series of themed events in the capital, which will culminate next week with Alistair Darling standing on top of the London Stock Exchange, pissing in the wind.

World sleeps easy as ownership of precious stripes finally settled

Local authorities across the UK have been ordered to pay millions of pounds in damages and backdated licensing costs, after losing a landmark case to the sports and fashion manufacturer Adidas. The ruling in the European Court of Justice ends several years of wrangling, over whether Adidas’ distinctive “three stripe” branding could be extended to cover designs using two stripes.

Frances Bruckenbauer, a partner at specialist intellectual property (IP) law firm Comely, Stern & Festoon, which represented the fashion giant, commented on the victory: “This was the only decision the court could have reached over such flagrant abuse of my client’s brand rights. For decades, the UK has been generating significant revenue from charging motorists for parking in premium roadside locations, identified by clearly derivative double-stripe branding.”

As well as being ordered to pay damages and license fees in the region of £300 million, councils now face an estimated £2.5 million bill for removing and replacing the infringing road marks.

Brian Clapton, a spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said he regretted the court’s decision, but welcomed the opportunity to review the UK’s policies on parking restriction.

“We have felt for some time that the current system is overly negative for today’s Britain”, he said. “Rather than stipulating those areas where motorists cannot park, we will begin marking approved parking spaces, with an easily recognisable rounded tick motif.”

The judgement could also set a precedent for other similar cases, currently in the pipeline, in which Adidas is seeking punitive damages against zebras, wasps and rainbows.

OPINIO-TRON SAYS: iPlayer points to two-tier UK internet

It looks like the debate over net neutrality, which has been raging in the US for some time, is set to waft politely into the UK. For the uninitiated, the central question in this fracas is whether ISPs should be allowed to charge content producers for a ‘fast lane’ in today’s increasingly crowded internet.

The ideological answer from internet purists is an emphatic “no”. Giving priority to traffic from specific sources would, it is argued, create a two-tier experience, in which ordinary users are driven into the clutches of Big Media, at the expense of new players. This doesn’t sit well with the idea of the open, indiscriminate internet we have grown to love.

Perhaps inevitably though, such egalitarianism has stubbed its toe on the footstool of commercial practicality.

In the UK, this has taken the form of the BBC’s hugely popular iPlayer TV streaming service, which saw 1 million people downloading 3.5 million programmes in its first month. iPlayer has put a massive and sudden strain on the UK’s already decrepit broadband infrastructure, which industry regulator OFCOM predicts will cost in the region of £830 million to upgrade.

But competition is squeezing the ISPs’ profit margins and there is a growing resentment that they should have to carry the significant cost of transmitting content from a state-funded producer. Also, as consumers, we’ve grown used to broadband which offers ever higher speeds at ever decreasing cost.

All of which presents us with something of a pickle: the ISPs won’t (and arguably can’t) pay for iPlayer’s bandwidth requirements, while consumers are unlikely to tolerate a reverse in falling broadband costs.

That really only leaves one option: the Beeb. But why should the BBC – and, by extension, payers of the mandatory TV license fee – pay for bandwidth which could also be used by 4OD, YouTube, Joost and the organisation’s other potential competitors?

Senior figures at BT are already talking publicly about the creation of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) in the UK, under which large pieces of high-demand content would be stored in (and distributed from) regional “nodes”, thereby limiting the strain on the country’s broadband backbone. Charging the BBC for space on a CDN seems like the obvious solution to their mutual problem: all the reserved bandwidth iPlayer demands, plus a much-needed new revenue stream for BT.

Which brings us back to net neutrality.

Our hunger for bandwidth is only going to get greater as more content moves online and into high definition. While the economics of content production may currently allow us to download TV for little or no cost, this is arguably being subsidised by spiralling overheads for the ISPs, which have become a de-facto distributor. It is hard to see how this can continue, but equally hard to envisage a solution in which the content producers don’t end up paying for preferential treatment.

UK net sex pests face terrifying trust-based monitoring

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has today announced a new scheme to register the email addresses and online identities of all UK sex offenders. These lists will be checked against the records of social networking sites and other potential targets, to safeguard children and other legitimate internet users.

Failure to provide accurate addresses, or withholding other online details, could result in a lengthy prison sentence.

"Sex offenders are, by their very nature, terrified of breaking the law", gloated Smith. "They are also infamously rubbish at making up false identities for themselves, particularly in the secure, verifiable environment of the internet. This law is flawless."

Terrance Guppie is a reformed sex offender, who now works in prisons to help rehabilitate recent convicts.

"This new law will really make people think twice", agreed Guppie. "Imagine I spent a couple of minutes getting a completely anonymous email address, which I used to join a social networking site, before befriending, grooming and horribly defiling a teenage girl. If she then ratted me out to the police, I'd be in so much trouble over that unregistered email."

In other news, one of the busiest commuter lines from the capital was brought a halt this afternoon, when satire threw itself under the 17:45 at Cricklewood.

Business "just too good" complain banks

First Direct has become the latest high street bank to withdraw its range of mortgage products from the market, citing the "huge popularity of and enthusiasm for crippling debt".

The bank has moved quickly to reassure its existing customers that its popularity - rather than the bankrupt global system of inter-bank lending - is the reason for today's move.

"The real problem is that we simply can't give out money quickly enough", First Direct's chief executive, Chris Pilling told the BBC this morning. "So we've decided to stop lending entirely until we can widen the doors in our branches. Before someone gets hurt."

As the 'real economy' impact of the credit crunch bites deeper, First Direct is the latest in a string of UK banks and building societies to be overwhelmed by a groundswell of consumer optimism.

"I believe that running to keep up with customer demand is an enviable position for any business to be in", concluded Pilling. "Now, do you know if the newsagent round the corner opens late? I need some change for the bus."